A Comparative Study On The Behaviors Of Verbs Of SAYING In Oral English By Chinese English Majors And English Native Speakers

Verbs,as indispensable parts of sentences,are bottlenecks impeding learners’progress in the process of learning a foreign language because of their variable forms and complex meanings.What is more,verbs of SAYING are the main modes as well as the important means of communication.Therefore,based on the sample corpora of SECCL and BNCSC,with the data collected and processed by Antconc,SPSS and Excel,this study attempts to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis of verbs of SAYING from the perspective of distribution,colligation,collocation and semantic prosody.The study aims to figure out the features and problems of the usage of verbs of SAYING among Chinese English majors in order to help them to acquire these verbs and improve the efficiency of language learning.The main research results are concluded as follows:(1)From the perspective of distribution of verbs of SAYING,there exists a significant difference on the selected verbs of SAYING between Chinese English majors and English native speakers according to the Chi-square tests.Chinese English majors use fewer types of verbs than English native speakers do when expressing the act of SAY.(2)As for the behavior of colligation,Chinese English major students prefer to use the expressions similar to mother tongue.(3)In the behavior of collocation,compared with the native speakers,the collocations that Chinese English major students used are comparatively simpler and more fixed.There is almost no overlap between collocates in same colligation pattern.(4)In the field of semantic prosody,there are no obvious dif.ferences between Chinese English majors and English native speakers.These results are probably due to the language transfer,the familiarity of certain expressions and the complexity of each verb patterns.Besides that,the content of the sample SECCL also exerts certain influence since it is a task-oriented corpus with all of its materials coming from TEM 4 oral examinations.